Sweet Potato White Chocolate Chip Cookies

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This post was originally published on November 19, 2021.

Sweet potato white chocolate chip cookies make the perfect festive holiday dessert, whether it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas!

We all know sweet potato casserole is a classic holiday dish that we only have the luxury of enjoying once (or twice) a year at Thanksgiving or Christmas. But what if we could enjoy this dessert-for-dinner treat more than once a year, in a delicious and unique new way? That’s where our sweet potato white chocolate chip cookies come in!

Inspired by sweet potato casserole, these sweet potato white chocolate chip cookies are the perfect holiday dessert. They’re full of cozy fall and winter flavors like cinnamon and nutmeg, but they’re also sugary sweet like every good cookie should be. Their fluffy yet slightly gooey, melt-in-your-mouth texture is the perfect finale to a Thanksgiving meal, or an even better afternoon treat with a cup of coffee. They’re even a hit at Christmas cookie swaps for their unique flavor and texture!

Not to mention, using sweet potato in cookies has some health benefits – mainly that it lets us reduce the amount of butter we’d normally put in cookies. Sweet potatoes are super nutritious, so replacing some butter with sweet potato is an easy swap to make your holiday cookies a little less unhealthy.

Ingredients For Sweet Potato White Chocolate Chip Cookies

There are a few special ingredients that make these sweet potato cookies so delicious, including mashed sweet potato, marshmallow fluff, cinnamon, nutmeg, and white chocolate chips. 

Here’s the full list of ingredients you’ll need to make this holiday cookie recipe:

• Unsalted butter
• Granulated sugar
• Light brown sugar
• Mashed sweet potato
• Egg yolk
• Vanilla extract
• Marshmallow fluff
• All-purpose flour
• Baking powder
• Baking soda
• Cinnamon
• Nutmeg
• Salt
• White chocolate chips

You can’t have sweet potato cookies without sweet potato! We recommend baking the sweet potato in the oven until it’s soft, then mashing it and letting it cool before adding to this cookie recipe. If you want an easier alternative, you can look for canned sweet potato puree at the grocery store and use that instead.

Sometimes we’ll even make baked sweet potato cubes for dinner and then use the leftovers for these cookies, or our sweet potato cinnamon spice bread recipe. Whatever form of mashed sweet potato you have on hand will work great in these cookies!

The marshmallow fluff infuses these cookies with creamy texture and marshmallow-y flavor that tastes just like sweet potato casserole. Cinnamon and nutmeg make these cookies smell just as amazing as they taste. And the super sweet white chocolate chips go with sweet potato much better than semi-sweet, milk, or dark chocolate chips.

How To Make Sweet Potato White Chocolate Chip Cookies

Here’s how to make the best sweet potato cookies with white chocolate chips this holiday season:

1. First, combine the melted butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix on low to medium speed until well-combined.
2. Then, add the mashed sweet potato, egg yolk, vanilla, and marshmallow fluff. Mix on medium speed until thoroughly combined.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients – flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.
4. Next, add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients a little at a time, mixing on low speed until just combined.
5. Finally, fold in the white chocolate chips, then refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes.
6. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Shape the cookie dough into 1.5 tablespoon rounds and place them on parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing them about 2 inches apart.
7. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the tops of the cookies look soft and they begin to darken slightly in color around the edges.
8. Let cool for about 5 minutes on the baking sheets before transferring to a cooling rack. Cool at least another 5 minutes before serving, or cool completely and store in an air-tight container.

We recommend making the cookie dough in a stand mixer since it makes it much easier to fully incorporate the mashed sweet potato and sticky marshmallow fluff. If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can definitely mix the dough by hand – just know that you’re signing up for an arm workout!

These cookies can be a little messy to shape, since the dough is pretty sticky. Refrigerating the dough should help make it a little more solid, but if you don’t want to deal with the mess, we recommend using a cookie scoop. Just scoop and plop the cookies right onto the pan, and don’t worry if they come out a little lumpy. It just adds to the rustic charm of these cookies 🙂

Make sure to let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for the whole 5 minutes before trying to move them to a cooling rack. They’re so fluffy and gooey that they’ll risk falling apart during transfer until they’ve cooled enough.

Tips For Success

This recipe is truly a labor of love – it took a whole lot of trial and error for us to develop these delicious sweet potato cookies! So that we can help you succeed on the first try, here are a few helpful tips:

1. Wait for the mashed sweet potato to cool to room temperature before making the cookie dough. Better yet, prepare the sweet potato a day in advance and keep it in the fridge until you need it.
2. Make sure to fully incorporate the mashed sweet potato and marshmallow fluff into the cookie dough, especially if you’re mixing by hand. This will take some time and effort! You’ll know everything’s combined if your wet ingredients have a totally consistent texture before adding the dry ingredients. (If you don’t fully incorporate these ingredients, you may end up with sweet potato chunks in your dough and pockets of sticky marshmallow dripping out of the cookies).
3. Use a reliable stand mixer if you have one – it’s a game-changer for this recipe! We purchased our trusty Cuisinart stand mixer while we were developing these cookies and were completely blown away by how much the consistency of the dough improved versus mixing by hand. If you don’t have a stand mixer but love to bake, we highly recommend investing in one.
4. A good cookie scoop will help you make sure your cookies are all the same size – a must if you’re baking for the holidays! Lightly grease it with cooking spray before using so the dough doesn’t stick.
5. The cookie dough is a little sticky, so refrigerating it for 30 minutes helps solidify it enough to make shaping easier. The longer it sits on the counter, the stickier the dough will become, and the harder it will be to shape. If at any point it becomes too messy for you, you can stick the dough back in the fridge for another 15 to 20 minutes and then make another batch of cookies later.

Storing & Serving

Let the cookies cool completely before storing them in an air-tight container at room temperature. They’re very soft and gooey, and they’ll continue to soften a little more every day, so we recommend making them no more than 2 days ahead of a holiday party or event. They’ll stay good for about 5 days, but their texture is best on the first day!

Since they are so gooey, they also tend to stick together easily. Store them in a single layer if you can. If you can’t, use sheets of parchment paper between layers so they don’t stick together.

You can also freeze these cookies after they’ve cooled, and they’ll stay good for up to 3 months. Defrost at room temperature for 12 hours before enjoying, or eat them straight from the freezer!

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

If you’re a fan of unique cookie recipes and sweet potato casserole, you’ll love this easy holiday cookie recipe! You can enjoy the delicious flavors of sweet potato casserole in cookie form at any time of the year with this recipe.

Make these sweet potato white chocolate chip cookies for a Thanksgiving dessert, Christmas cookie swap, or New Year’s Eve party with friends. They’re always a hit at our family parties, surprising every skeptic who tries them! If you love this recipe, don’t forget to rate, comment, and share below.